The Negro Worker (1928-1932)

'3, H,zZ

Workers of the World, Unite!

THE

NEGRO WORKER

No. 8 August 15, 1932 Vol. 2

How The Church Supports War. — Priest Blessing Troups

DOWN WITH THE
IMPERIALIST WAR MONGERS

Price 5 cenis

Price 2 pence

Editors are invited to reprint articles and resolutions
which appear in the ” Negro Worker”.

Editorial Board: George Padmore (U. S. A.), Editor-in-Chief.
Contributing Editors: J. W. Ford, Cyril Briggs, D. B. Amis
(U. S. A.); 0. E. Huiswood (R. 1. L. U.); C. Alex¬
ander (West Indies); E, Forster Jones, E. F.
Small (West Africa); G. Kouyate (French West
Africa): A. Nzula, E, T. Mofutsanyana (South
Africa); Mansey (Congo).

Managing Editor: Max Barek (Hamburg).

CONTENTS

Page

The World Today. By G. Padmore . 1

Ireland! Fights for Freedom. By T. A. Jackson . 5

Free Speech and Press for West Indian Masses

By Ch, Alexander . . . 9

The Situation in Kenya. By J. E. . 11

How Garvey Betrayed the Negroes. By C. Briggs .... 14

Scottsboro Campaign in England1. By J. L. Engdahl .... 18

A Letter from London. By A. Crowther . 20

Misery in the West Indies. By S. P. R . 21

A Garveyite Offended. By H. H. Kendal . 22

Where Terror Reigns. By J. Komfeder . 24

The WSorld Situation and the Negro. By C. Briggs .... 29

Remain RoLland Denounces Imperialism . 32

ORGAN OF THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION COMMITTEE
OF NEGRO WORKERS, 8 ROTHESOODSTR., HAMBURG, GERMANY

Notice to our Readers.

All cheques, money orders and registered letters must be made payable to:

The International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers:

8, Rothesoodstrasse, Hamburg.

THE NEGRO WORKER

No. 8 August 15, 1932 Vol. 2

The World Today / By George Padmore,

•J nemployment and War are the two most vital issues belore the working
class today. Both are inevitable parts of the capitalist system. In every country
of the world, with the exception of the Soviet Union, a handful of men own and
control everything. These people are the capitalists. The great majority of the
people are compelled to toil for them in order to eat. These are the workers.
Today, the entire capitalist system is in the greatest crisis which it has ever
known. The capitalists are no longer able to provide the workers with jobs. Over
40 millions people have been thrown on the streets to starve in every country in
Europe and America. If we add to this number of the unemployed, those in China,
in India, in Africa, the West Indies and other colonies and semi-colonies, the
total will come up to hundreds of millions. This is the "blessing" of capitalism
which these parasites, aided by their lackeys, preach to the masses as a system
which the toiling masses of humanity have no right to revolt against.

T

* he workers, however, do not intend to sit down and starve to death. Every¬
where they are beginning to organize and to demonstrate on the streets under
the slogan, “We want bread, we want work”; “Down with the capitalist govern¬
ments of starvation and war!” — The Negro workers in America, in Africa and
other colonies are also taking an active part in these demonstrations, for they
are the greatest sufferers from starvation and hunger.

The capitalists, realizing their difficulties — are feverishly preparing to plunge
the world into another bloody war. They hope that by starting a war, not only
among themselves, but especially against Soviet Russia, the only country ruled
by workers, they will be able to kill two birds with one stone. First, they hope
that the workers will forget unemployment, starvation and hunger, and thereby
ward off the overthrow of the capitalist system; and second, these parasites who
prey upon the living and the dead, will be able to continue to run their factories
by turning them into ammunition plants for the production of war materials.

Already they are beginning, with the aid of the capitalist newspapers, the
cinema and the Churches to preach to the workers that the war means work. That
if the workers want to get jobs they must support the plans of the war mongers.
Unfortunately many workers believe this lie. But let us not forget the lessons of
1914-18. Let us not forget the millions of workers and peasants of all races and
nationalities who died in order to help the capitalists to rob one another and
enslave the colonial peoples. 'War means destruction, waste, wholesale murders.
War does not bring relief to the workers. War is only of benefit to the bankers,
the capitalists, the armament manufacturers.

1

This war has already started. The Japanese imperialists, supported by the
other war mongers, especially England and France, without even the formal
declaration of war, — which the imperialists no longer waste time to indulge in —
bombarded Shanghai and destroyed the whole of the Chinese section of the city,
known as Chapei. During this bombardement which lasted only a short time, it
has been estimated that over 8,000 were killed, 2,000 wounded, 10,400 missing,
t while over 250,000 workers have been thrown out of jobs, because all of the
factories valued at more than 15 million dollars were completely destroyed by the
Japanese artillery and airplanes. All this happened just in a few days. — Such are
the “blessings" of imperialist war.

Not satisfied with this, the Japanese imperialists have invaded Manchuria,
stolen it away from the Chinese, enslaved the workers and peasants by means
of machine guns, and are now turning Manchuria into a batte field which they
are preparing to use as the "jumping off" ground to attack the Soviet Union.
War is like the plague. Once it has begun, — it spreads. And before long, we
Negro workers will soon find ourselves envolved in another world slaughter, as
in 1914-18, unless we join with the other workers to put a stop to it at once,
through organized demonstrations and protest.

*

M any workers think that the Japanese are the only ones to be blamed. This
is not so. The Japanese imperialists and militarists would never have ventured
to make war against China or carry out their warlike provocative threats against
the Soviet Union unless they knew before hand that they had the support of the
other imperialist States, especially England and France. The French imperialists,
who are the most bloodthirsty war mongers in Europe have loaned Japan hundreds
of millions of francs, with the express agreement that the Japanese imperialists
spend it back in buying war supplies from French armament manufacturers. The
British and American capitalists, jealous of the big war supply trade which France
is doing with the Japanese militarists, have also agreed to loan Japan money, so
that they in turn could buy ammunition from them.

For example, it was officially admitted in the House of Commons, a few weeks
ago, that during the months of February, March and April, British armament
firms, with the consent of the National Government, of which that arch-hypocrite
MacDonald, who poses as the “Angel of Peace" is Prime Minister, supplied the
Japanese imperialists on the one hand with the following ammunition: 240 field
guns and machine guns and 6,000,000 machine gun cartridges. And during the same
■ period, the very same armament firm supplied China with 25 machine guns, 505,000
machine gun cartridges, 500,000 rifle cartridges. The U. S. A., although the greatest
rival of Japan is also shipping war supplies to Tokio.

While this traffic in death dealing devices is being carried on between the
East and Wiest, — the representatives of the various capitalist nations were assem¬
bled at Geneva, making speeches about disarmament. This only serves to show
what liars and hypocrities these imperialists are. While they pay lip service to
peace in order to try and mislead' the masses, they are at the same time adding
to their bank accounts by promoting and encouraging war.

*

T his war in the East is merely the beginning of another world war. Since the
world is already divided up among the various imperialist States, they are all
feverishly striving to find new outlets. They want to turn the Soviet Union into
• a cotony which they could loot and rape as they are doing in Africa, China and

2

elsewhere. In order to carry out this scheme, the imperialist powers, headed by
Japan, have started the ball a-rolling. Their scheme is to first of all divide up
China and share it up among themselves in just the same way as they divided
up Africa during the latter part of the last century. At the time Japan had not
yet emerged as a great imperialist power. It was only after the Russian-Japanese
war in 1905 that she was admitted into the council of the foremost robber states
of the world, and by that time Africa was already divided up among the other
imperialist nations. That is one of the reasons why she is so anxious to grab up
as much of China as possible, so that by the time the squabble between the other
imperialist land grabbers starts with machine guns and battle ships she will have
already got away with her -share. On the plan of dividing up China, — Japan, France
and England, are already in common agreement. Japan will take over Manchuria in
the North of China, England the Yang-Tse valley territories, and France the
Southern provinces, next to her colony, Indo-China. But America, although out to
rob China, is not in favour of the dividing up scheme for fear that her rivals may
get the lion's share. She rather wants what is known as the "Open Door" policy,
which will give her greater economic advantages over her rivals, especially
Japan. This is where the first contradiction shows itself. This contradiction is
most sharply expressed between Japan and America, for they are the greatest
rivals in the Pacific. They are like two thieves who cannot agree upon how to
share up the booty. Each is jealous of the other. Each is afraid that the other
will get too much. Yet still, each wants to devour China in its own way.

*

1M

**ow, with regard to the Soviet Union. All of these capitalist bandits are for
war upon the Soviet Union. Why is there this common agreement? First of all,
the Soviet Union is no capitalist country. It covers one sixth of the earth's
surface and is under a workers’ government. In Soviet Russia, there is no un¬
employment, while in America, the richest capitalist country, there are more than
12 million black and white workers starving. The capitalist countries represent
a decaying society. In the Soviet Union, the toiling masses are building up a new
society, — Socialism. The capitalist world is like a dying old man. The Soviet
Union is like a healthy, verile young man. And here we have the greatest contra¬
diction in a nut-shell. It is a question of Age against Youth, — a conflict of social
systems, Socialism versus Capitalism.

And it is just because the capitalists and their agents realize that they and their
society are doomed, there is the common agreement among them to make war
upon tne Soviet Union, and distroy it, if possible. For, the more the Soviet Union
develops on the basis of its Five Year Plan, the more it inspires the millions of
starving workers throughout the world to follow the example of the Russian toiling
masses, That is to get rid of their exploiters and set up their own government.
For this is the only way to' abolish unemployment and war. In other words: What
the Russian workers have done, we can also do.

*

T

* his is the reason for the feverish preparation for war among the capitalist
nations and their increasing hostility towards the Soviet Union. This is why
Europe is spending a sum of 500 million pounds a year on maitaining huge armies,
while millions of workers walk the streets, — starving. This is why England,
France, America and the other powers, although they are quarreling among them¬
selves as to who will get the biggest part of China, are like "loving brothers"
when it comes to the question of war upon Russia. This is why all of these powers
are supplying the Japanese imperialists with ammunition and encouraging Japan to

3

start a war against Russia, with the promise that they will join in and help in
destroying the fatherland of the working class, and set the whole world once
more aflame.

* * *

Negro workers! This war concerns you! You will be mobilized again
as cannon fodder. The millionaires, the bankers, the shipowners, the armament
manufacturers, the landlords and the tax collectors — they and their sons don't go
to war. It is the workers, the peasants, and the toiling youth who are called upon
to dress up in uniforms and go and shoot each other down, while the exploiters
and the oppressors remain at home and fill their coffers by profiteering.

Negro workers! Let us not forget how we were fooled in 1914-18. The imperia¬
lists and their black agents, — Dubois for the American imperialists, Blaze Diagne
for the French, and Marcus Garvey for the British. They told us to go and fight.
That after the war we would get "democracy". That Africa would be free. That
the Negro, peoples of the world will have the right to live as free human beings.
Millions of black men, misled by these fakers, died on the battlefields of France,
in Egypt, East and West Africa in this imperialist slaughter. And what is the
result? Today we are worse off than we were before 1914. In America, Negro
men and women are still lynched with impunity. Nine boys are in Scottsboro
prison framed up by the same imperialists for whom we fought, faced with death
on the electric chair. This is American "democracy"! In Africa, the Negro masses
are subjected to the worst forms of exploitation, forced labour and taxation. This
is how the British and the French imperialists proclaim their “democracy”1
Although the Negroes fought and died, Tanganyika, Cameroon, Togoland and South
Africa were all taken away from Germany and divided up among the imperialists
of England, France and Belgium. These colonies were not given back to the
natives who fought and died in the campaigns against the Germans in Africa. The
Africans were not even consulted as to their wishes. This is how the League of
Nations carries out the "right for self-determination"! Added to which, millions
of Negroes — ex-service men and their families are starving today.

*

Negro comrades, black brothers! Let us learn from our experiences of 1914-18.
Remember the saying: "Once bitten, — twice shy." The imperialists mean us no
good. They are our greatest enemies. When they cannot come forward to present
their lying promises to us they employ black agents who try to mislead us. They
too are our enemies, whom we must expose and denounce as traitors. We
have a great duty to fulfill. We must organize today and join forces with
the white workers of Europe and America, the yellow workers of China
and Japan, the brown workers of India and other lands and tell to these
imperialist murderers, these capitalist bandits and* cut-throats, these human
scavengers who thrive upon the dead and the living, these scorges of humanity, —
that we will build an iron ring around the Soviet Union, that we will refuse to
fire one shot against our heroic comrades of the Soviet Union who are showing us
the path to freedom and emancipation. We must let the imperialists know that
if they dare to invade the land of Socialist construction, our arms will be used
against them. We will never be used to further their predatory interest. We will
strike a blow for the freedom of Africa and the liberation of the toiling masses
throughout the world, for we all realize that the successful building up of Socia¬
lism in the Soviet Union is the greatest inspiration to the Negro toiling masses
in their struggle for national freedom and social emancipation from the yoke of
imperialism and capitalist exploitation.

4

| Under The Yoke of Imperialism |

Ireland Fights for Freedom / bv t. a. jaiks0n.

We reprint the following article by comrade T. A. Jackson, published in the
Daily W,brker" for the benefit of our readers, especially those in t'he colonies.

This article brilliantly confirms what we have always pointed out to the Negro
masses, namely, that British imperialism, whether in India, Africa, the West Indies,
Ireland or other colonial and semi-colonial lands, carries out the same ruthless
policy of expropriating the peasantry from their lands, in order to turn them into
wage slaves, and to extort taxes out of them for the English capitalist class, and
their native lackeys. Furthermore, the history of Ireland clearly shows to the
Negro masses, especially those who are still under the influence of the reformist
misleader, Marcus Garvey, that imperialism is not a question of colour, but of

British West African army. Cannon fodder for coming world war

class. For here we see, Ireland, a “white” nation under the yoke of another
white ’ nation. The "white” British capitalists and landlords don't give a damn
more for the "white” Irish workers and peasants than for the Negro toiling
masses. With them, it is a question of class against class. The conquerors ex¬
ploiting the conquered. Therefore, the history of Ireland, like that of Africa drips
with the blood of millions of brutally oppressed and exploited workers and
peasants, for the purpose of maintaining a handful of alien imperialists, marau¬
ders and plunderers. It is the duty of every Negro worker groaning under the
Union Jack to join hands with the toiling masses of Ireland in the common struggle
against their common enemy — British imperialism. — Ed.

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IRELAND? WE!

Not the prating, pretending, political poltroons, who run round the world in a
panic from conference to conference — trying to save their evil, senile faces.

Not the British Government, nor King George, nor Lloyd George, nor George
Lansbury.

5

All these will do after their kind — greedily, stupidly, savagely and brutally.

For them Ireland is a milch cow — to be pitted and praised so long as it yields
an abundant stream of milk; and to be tethered, imprisoned and abused for brm e
beast so soon as the milk yield fails.

What they will do we know — they will crush Ireland if they cannot corrupt its
politicians and trick it into a swindle bargain.

But what are WE going to do?

We, the workers of Britain, have no interest in the plunder of Ireland and still
less in the enslavement of its people.

What is it to us if the Irish Free State refuses to hand over a tribute of blood-
money to the descendants of the exterminating, rackrenting, evicting landlords,
who bled Ireland white for centuries?

Think !

How did this landlord class — bought out by these land annuities that de Val&ra
(acting under a clear mandate from his people) is withholding — how did they get
to be landlords in Ireland?

The full tale covers 700 years. It began with a slop-over into Ireland of the
Norman Conquest of England. The thieves who "pinched" England went on to
' pinch" Ireland. Then, as happened in England, later generations of thieves arose
who, by various devices, "pinched” it in turn from the descendants of the
original brigands.

The difference was that, whereas in England this thieving from the thieves
was a family concern, which went on over the heads of our kind — changing only
the personality of the particular thief who plundered us — in Ireland each shift
of "property” came as a result of an invasion from England and an exterminating
war in which the Irish people were regarded and treated as savages and bar¬
barians, fit for nothing but extermination.

The British Empire began in Ireland. It began when modern capitalism began
with Henry VIII. and this "Protestant" plundering of the church and the
common lands.

Six times our forbears in England rose in revolt against this plundering of the
land from under their feet. Is it any wonder that the Irish rose in revolt, too, at
the same process?

They "cleared" whole stretches of the countryside in England, driving men off
the land to make room for sheep.

In Ireland first and last they have tried to “clear” the whole country and
literally exterminate the whole population.

The whole country! — except a strip of the West Coast, in Connaught, when a
writer of the time said: "There was no tree big enough to hang a man, no water
in which to drown him and not earth enough to bury -him when dead!"

It was this Connaught that was offered to the Irish as the only alternative to
"Hell!"

It began in the days of Queen Mary, the Catholic (whom Protestants call
"Bloody" Mary),

Mary cleared and "planted" with English settlers a big part of Leinster, her
sister Elizabeth cleared and planted a big part of Munster; their successor, James
Stuart, cleared and planted most of Ulster.

In every case the Irish revolted again and again, and every revolt was bloodily
suppressed and followed by a deliberately created famine!

The Irish fighting for their lands let themselves be drawn into the English
Civil War on the side of the King. Cromwell, after he had beaten the King and
cut off his head, defeated and crushed the Irish and confiscated the land once again.

6

When the French Revolution came, the peasants of the South — rack-rented
plundered and persecuted — joined with the Republican craftsmen, artisans, mer¬
chants and farmers of the North — who also had been robbed, persecuted and
insulted — to form the United Irishmen and strive for an Irish Republic.

Once again, in 1798, the Irish were bloodily suppressed with savage barbarities
— and this time the "Irish" landlord class (really the English "garrison" in Ireland)
led the way in the ferocity and unnameable barbarity of suppression.

The Irish rose in insurrection again in 1818 — driven desperate by the "famine".
During those famine years of 1846-8, some 2,000,000 Irish men and women died
of famine or famine fever.

Yet during those years, Ireland exported in corn and cattle enough to have
fed the whole population twice over.

The corn and cattle went to pay the rent to the landlords in England — the
people who had produced both, died of hunger, because their "share", the potatoes,
rotted with the blight.

The Irish revolted in 1848 — and so did the English Chartists attempt to revolt
in that same year.

How Britain Rules India, WJiite and native armed police in Bombay

7

The Irish Republicans attempted a revolt in 1865 and 1867. In 1866 the London
workers tore up the railings of Hyde Park in the course of their demand for reform.

All through the years from 1880 to 1893 the Irish in the Land League and
similar bodies fought against eviction from their homes by these exterminating
landlords backed by British imperialist bullets and bayonets.

And all through these years the English and Scottish workers, in strike after
strike, in riot after riot (like Bloody Sunday in Trafalgar Square in 1886 and the
unemployed riot in the West End in 1885) fought against the allies of that same
exterminating gang.

The Irish rose again in Easter' Week, 1916, led by James Conolly, who pre¬
viously had helped to lead the struggles of the British workers for trade union
recognition and for Socialism.

The Irish fought for the Irish Republic, which Conolly proclaimed all through
the Black-and-Tan war of 1919-22; and all that time we, too, were fighting, though
less bloodily, for wages, for maintenance for the unemployed, and against the
intervention in Russia to suppress the Workers' Republic.

At every stage in history the robbers of the Irish have been the robbers of
the common people in England too; every struggle of the Irish has moved parallel
with one of our struggles likewise.

What should we do, now, but maintain the fight of centuries, and stand
solidly with the Irish against the common enemy and destroyer of us all?

I say "Ireland” and the Irish.

I am not concerned with the "Irish Free State” — except so far as I am
forced to be.

The partitioning of Ireland between "Northern Ireland” and the "Free State"
is in itself a conqueror's trick — an intentional injury — an attempt to starve the
Irish of the South by cutting them off from the factories of the North. When the
evil was done — and the Irish only consented to it because their ammunition was
exhausted and they were not sure of our backing and so consented under com¬
pulsion — these factories were in full and profitable working. Now they stand idle,
and it is "Northern Ireland" that suffers from being cut off from the foodstuffs
of the South.

And it is now, and in these circumstances, that your rulers, the agents, nominees
and spokesmen of the greedy, plundering gang that has robbed Ireland with the
one hand, while they have robbed us with the other — it is now that this gang start
a tariff war to coerce the Irish, by making it impossible for them to sell their
foodstuffs in either England, Scotland or Northern Ireland,

The Irish must go hungry, and we must go hungry too — to gratify the greed of
the blood-saturated, crime-stained, profit-glutted gang that, having plundered all
of us for seven centuries, want to go on plundering us all for seven centuries more!

And they add insult to injury by expecting us to give them our sons for one
more murder-raid into Ireland!

We will not stand for it.

In 1900, at an International Socialist Conference in Paris. James Connolly (my
own teacher and comrade) stood up and claimed that Ireland was a Nation, and
should have voting rights as such. Our British delegation endorsed that claim,
and it was conceded.

An end to the partition of Ireland. An end to the malicious imperialist sepa¬
ration of the exploited workers of the North from the plundered and insulted
farmers and landworkers of the South.

A free Ireland, and a United Irish Republic!

And an undying of British and Irish workers in the fight for an end to all
imperialism, and a world union of Soviet Republics.

8

Free Speech and Press forWest Indian Masses

By Charles Alexander (Trinidad).

A central issue around which the Negro masses of the West Indies must develop
a persistent struggle is that for the right of free speech and press. This boasted
' right" around which the British imperialists have built a halo for themselves, and
which they like to proclaim to the world as an historic possession for all Englishmen
and English subjects, is not only unknown in the West Indies, but any attempt on
the part of the masses to exercise such rights is met with the most brutal
suppression. The agents of the imperialists, the colonial governors, see to it that
not only all attempts of the masses to struggle for bread, for the right to live are
ruthlessly crushed, but also the spoken or written words of these masses or their
spokesmen are stifled.

Recent events, particularly in the islands of Trinidad and Jamaica, show the
trend of this suppression policy of this most basic right of the workers and peasants,
and in view of the situation prevalent in all the islands, and the necessary struggles
which will develop on the part of the natives in the near future against their un¬
bearable conditions, the denial of this right and the violence utilized by the im¬
perialists to prevent the masses exercise of same will play an ever increasing role.

The latest evidence of denial of free speech and press to the native masses is
the banning by the Trinidad Government of the “Negro Worker", official organ of
the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers. It is not necessary
to go into the conditions of life of the masses of Trinidad at this time, inasmuch
as we have already pointed them out in previous articles in this journal. It will
suffice to say that the “Negro Worker” by its exposure of these conditions, and
the role of the Negro Reformists, brought sharply to the attention of the Trinidadian
masses a correct picture of the misery and squalor surrounding their lives, and the
path they must pursue not only to alleviate these unbearable conditions, but to put
a final end to their exploitation and oppression by the imperialist parasites. The
Trinidad government realized the great interest which was being manifested in the
"Negro Worker” by the masses, and that a certain section of these masses (long¬
shoremen) was beginning to follow the suggestions and teachings of the "Negro
Worker”. Hence the ban. Hence the attempt to suppress this militant voice of the
workers and peasants.

Shortly before the Trinidad government took its action against the "Negro
Worker” the Government of Jamaica sentenced to eighteen months in prison
T. Barnes, editor of a Jamaica Working class paper for republishing and editorial
from the "Daily Worker”, of the United States of America. The banning of the
“Negro Worker" and the imprisonment of Barnes are incidents of deep political
significance to the West Indian masses. Because it shows in this period of rising
discontent of the masses, with the workers more and more demonstrating their
determination to struggle (mass demonstration in Grenada, etc.), one of the weapons
the imperialists are resorting to, hoping thereby to defeat, to behead the struggles
of the toiling masses.

That the denial of free speech and press is a weapon mainly directed against
the workers and peasants in order to prevent them from d'evelopping struggles for
improved conditions of life, as well as for self-determination, is easily seen by the
fact that while the workers are denied this right, it is freely granted to the Salvation
Army and other religious fakers and peddlars of superstitious dope. The masses
must ask themselves this question: “Why is it these people who preach about god,
fire and brimstone can have the streets for their meetings, and publish their
magazines unhampered, while we who advocate the organization of trade unions,
and demand the abolition of taxation without representation cannot have such

9

rights and are jailed whenever we attempt to exercise same?” The answer is
because the religious fakers are doing the imperialists a service. They are helping
the imperialists tighten the chains of slavery around our necks, while we are
demanding these chains be smashed; we are demanding more wages, shorter hours,
in short better working and living conditions — but to the imperialist bandits this
means less profits. The imperialists are determined to perpetuate their system of
slavery — -the denial of free speech and press to the masses is^one of the means they
are utilizing to accomplish this.

The situation concerning this most fundamental right while serious in those
islands where a so-called representative form of government exists, is positively
outrageous in those still under absolute Crown Colony system. In the latter
mentioned islands the first copies of all newspapers must be submitted to the
colonial secretary for his approval before the entire issue is permitted to be
printed. Through this vicious censorship, all news unfavorable to imperialist ex¬
ploitation and oppression must be deleted, failing to do so the editor is charged
with edition and will face either a fine or a term of imprisonment. This means
that papers under the editorship of weak-kneed, petty-bourgeois, Kow-Towing
Negroes naturally become nothing more than mouth-pieces of the government,
reflecting the government's policy of oppression and suppression of the vast
masses. In these Crown Colony islands the use of the streets is entirely denied
to the workers, nor are they permitted to use halls or other forums for voicing
their demands. Free speech the workers demand — sedition the government
counters. Thus a virtual reign of terror exists.

It is therefore obvious that a struggle for the right of free speech and press
must become a living issue. While it is true the organization of the workers into
militant trade unions remains the central task, yet the fight for this fundamental
right cannot be submerged, but on the contrary must be connected with the other
basic demands. The organization of the workers will go forward undoubtedly, but
the tempo will be many times increased if the masses have the right to the streets,
and to publish their papers and magazines as collective agitators and organizers.
The imperialist bourgeoisie and their agents deny this right. The Negro reformists
cannot be expected to develop a consistent struggle for it. It is true that certain
sections of the radical Negro intellectuals can, and will be drawn into the struggle,
but basically it is the workers and peasants who will have the unswerving courage,
energy and determination to conduct and lead this struggle to victory. The masses
consequently must begin to take the initiative in this direction, and must begin
to organize groups around the slogan. "Free speech, press and assembly for the
toiling population." In Trinidad especially, they must raise the issue sharply in the
reformist organizations, and get not only the membership but also the leaders to
take action in this respect. Failure of these leaders to come forward in such
cause will expose them as not interested in fighting for this most basic right of
the workers.

The fight for free speech and press must be kept alive and must be carried
on persistently. It must go along with the fight for the organization of the workers,
the struggle against high taxation, and against unemployment, hunger and misery.
In this connection the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers
has a great task to perform, both to assist the West Indian masses to organize
into revolutionary trade unions, and to carry on the struggle for the right of free
speech and press.

10

Labour with a White Skin cannot Emancipate itself,
where Labour with a Black Skin is Branded ! — Marx.

The Situation Kenya

By J. E.

Kenya is the classical land of British imperialism. In no part of the Empire,
with the possible exception of South Africa do we find such outrageous
manifestations of imperialist oppression, as in Kenya. The following facts
glaringly reveal the terrible conditions under which the natives live.

"The Kenya African must be registered and have his finger prints taken, a
duplicate of this certificate being kept at the Government offices. Whenever he
wishes to enter a town he must obtain a special permit and he must produce this
certificate when applying for employment. This must be endorsed by the master
on leaving, and if for any reason, either just or unjust, the master refuses this
endorsement, he cannot obtain an engagement elsewhere. These regulations make
Kenya Africans strangers in their own land; they subject Africans to a control
which is only accorded to criminals in other countries, and which gives rise to
constant hardship and resentment. We urge that Africans be accorded the same
liberty and freedom as is enjoyed by all other British subjects in Kenya."

The inclusion of such a demand in a Memorandum submitted to the Colonial
Office by the Kikuyu Central Asociation, gives at once an idea of the status of
the native workers in British East Africa. In the debate on the Colonies in the
House of Commons, on Iuly 1, Colonel Wedgwood stated: "We cannot pretend
that our work (in Kenya) has been purely one of benevolence. The natives in
Kenya have got to work; and we make them work. They have to work two
months for a master to pay their tax.”

Members of the Kikuyu Central Association with their leaders, Harry Thuku

and Johnstone Kenyatta

This is merely another way of stating the official policy of British imperialism
in East Africa as formulated by Sir Percy Girouard, when he was Governor of
Aenya: "Taxation is the only method of compelling the natives to leave their
reserves for the purpose of seeking work. Only in this way can the cost of living
be increased for the natives. It is on this that the supply of labour and the price
of labour depends.”

11

The climate of British East Africa is suitable for white settlement, and the
main method of exploiting the country's resources is by the running of plantations,
owned by the whites, and worked by native labour.

It must be remembered that all the land was taken from the natives in the first
place by force and they were driven into reserves. By taking land from the native
and by imposing a poll-tax on him the British farmers are assured of a supply of
cheap labour.

The annexation of land, even that which has been set aside for Native Re¬
serves, still continues.

The Kikuyu Memorandum gives concrete instances of this land robbery. Valu¬
able land at Maragwa-Tana has been taken for the purposes of erecting an electric
power station, which is to be a private dividend-paying undertaking, financed by
the proprietors of the local Sisal Mills.

“Before the land at Maragwa-Tana was ear-marked as a Water-Power Reserve,
there were upon it 280 dwelling huts, 335 storage barns and 195 cattle pens be¬
longing to the Kikuyu. These were all razed to the ground to clear the site. On
the stretch of river taken there was a good ford where the Kikuyu crossed to
trade with the Wakamba. Now they have to go 20 or 30 miles to another ford.
Since this land has been taken many Kikuyu have been arrested and fined heavily
(from 250 shillings upwards) for trying to use the ford.”

Kikuyu workers and their children greeting Thuku on his release from prison

Thousands of the Kikuyu tribe have thus been rendered homeless, without
any sort of redress for the callous expropriation of their lands. Moreover, the
land surveys under which the Kikuyu were dispossessed were made in secret and
many areas were declared to be Crown land without the knowledge of the owners.

Strange that the white rulers who deem the "niggers" incapable of any civic
responsibility, and deny them any right to control their own lives, should expect
from them a sense of gratitude for being fined if they enter the forests which
were once their own, and a humble appreciation of white protection for the
privilege of paying heavy grazing fees should their cattle stray on to the lands
they know should still be theirsl

The missionaries have sanctimoniously played their part in the exploitation of
the Kikuyu and other tribes. They took from the natives land for mission sites,
money to erect mission schools and to equip them. Then, secretly, they got
licences from the Government giving them sole rights in the property that the
natives had provided! Protected from the Government, which incidentally has
evaded its responsibility to provide native schools, the mission authorities pro-

12

ceeded to exclude from the classes any native children whose parents objected
to the inculcation of western religious beliefs, and even brought prosecutions
against those parents who entered the premises or precincts on charges of tres¬
passing, which meant heavy fines and imprisonment with hard labour . . . for such
is the power of the missions!

So close, in fact, is the harmony between the imperialist Government and the
religious bodies that one wonders whether a text did not precede the infamous
"Northly Land Circular”. This document, issued to native chiefs, after calling
upon native authorities (chiefs and headsmen) to use their influence to induce all
young men to enter the labour market (virtual slavery on the plantations) stated
“that where farms and plantations are situated in the vicinity of a native area,
women and children should be encouraged to go out for such labour as they
can perform.”

As a result of this Suffer-little-children-to-come-unto-me” effort, 70,000 women
and 150,000 children were assigned to European farms in Kenya.*)

All rights to freedom of speech, free Press, and liberty to hold meetings are
denied the Kenyan Africans. For the Kikuyu people, as for other African tribes,
the advent of British colonisation has meant annexation of tribal lands, the impo¬
sition of taxes that compel them to hire their labour to the white settlers, and
submission to a whole series of Ordinances that are arrived at entirely without
any native expression of opinion, which are not even made known to the natives
by publication in their own language, but which are enforced with the utmost
severity.

The Kikuyu Memorandum to the Colonial Office quotes Criminal Case No. 83/29,
heared at Fort Hall, Kenya, when a Kikuyu named Daniel Kangori, a member of the
Local Native Council, was arrested with two others for being found conversing
in a house after an evening meal. After they were convicted the judge added:

1 order accused (1) and (2) to refrain from visiting accused (3)."

Realizing that one of the most potent methods of subjecting their race has been
the appointment of puppet chiefs, under the thumb of the British authorities, the
Kikuyu demand that the chiefs should be elected by the natives themselves in
each district.

Valuable as the Memorandum of the Kikuyu Central Association is for its
categorical statement of the natives' demands, it would be futile to imagine that
the presentation of any such document at Whitehall will bring any alleviation.
Paper cuts no ice. Only mass political activity of the native toilers, supported
by the solidarity of white workers in the "home" country can transform the Dark
Africa of imperialist exploitation into an enlightened country of freedom for
workers, both black and white. J. E.

*) See “Life and Struggles of the Negro Toilers”, by G. Padmore, R. I. L. U,
Publications, 9d. and 2s.

Long Live the Freedom of the Workers and
Oppressed Peoples!

13

How Garvey Betrayed The Negroes

By Cyril Briggs.

Garveyism, or Negro Zionism, rose on the crest of the wave of discontent
and revolutionary ferment which swept the capitalist world as a result of the post¬
war crisis.

Increased national oppression of the Negroes, arising out of the post-war crisis,
together with the democratic slogans thrown out by the liberal-imperialist demo-
gogues during the World War (right of self-determination for all nations, etc.) ser¬
ved to bring to the surface the latent national aspirations of the Negro masses
These aspirations were considerably strengthened with the return of the Negro
workers and poor farmers who had been conscripted to "save the world for demo¬
cracy". These returned with a wider horizon, new perspectives of human rights and
a new confidence in themselves as a result of their experiences and disillusionment
in the war. Their return strengthened the morale of the Negro masses and stiffened
their resistance. So-called race riots took the place of lynching bees and massacres.
The Negro masses were fighting back. In addition, many of the more politically
advanced of the Negro workers were looking to the example of the victorious Rus¬
sian proletariat as the way out of their oppression. The conviction was growing
that the proletarian revolution in Russia was the beginning of a world-wide united
movement of down-trodden classes and oppressed peoples. Even larger numbers
of the Negro masses were becoming more favorable toward the revolutionary labor
movement.

DISTORTION OF NATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT BY THE

REFORMISTS

This growing national revolutionary sentiment was seized upon by the Negro
petty bourgeoisie, under the leadership of the demagogue, Marcus Garvey, and
diverted into utopian, reactionary, "Back to Africa" channels. There were various
other reformist attempts to formulate the demands of the Negro masses and to
create a program of action which would appeal to all elements of the dissatisfied
Negro people. None of these met with even the partial and temporary success
which greeted the Garvey movement.

The leadership of the Garvey Movement consisted of the poorest stratum of
the Negro intellectuals — declassed elements, struggling business men and preachers,
lawyers without a brief, etc. — who stood more or less close to the Negro masses
and felt sharply the effects of the crisis. The movement represented a split-away
from the official Negro bourgeois leadership of the National Assocation for the
Advancement of Colored People which even then was already linked up with the
imperialists.

The main social base of the movement was the Negro agricultural workers
and the farming masses groaning under the terrific oppression of peonage and share
cropper slavery, and the backward sections of the Negro industrial workers, for
the most part recent migrants from the plantations into the industrial centers of
the North and South. These saw in the movement and escape from national oppres¬
sion, a struggle for Negro rights throughout the world, including freedom from the
oppression of the southern landlords and for ownership of the land. To the small
advanced industrial Negro proletariat, who were experienced in the class struggle,
the Garvey movement had little appeal.

While the movement never had the millions organizationally enrolled that its

14

Collection Number: AD1715

SOUTH AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF RACE RELATIONS (SAIRR), 1892-1974
PUBLISHER:

Collection Funder:- Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation
Publisher:- Historical Papers Research Archive
Location:- Johannesburg
©2013

LEGAL NOTICES:

Copyright Notice: All materials on the Historical Papers website are protected by South African copyright law and
may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, or otherwise published in any format, without the prior
written permission of the copyright owner.

Disclaimer and Terms of Use: Provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained therein, you
may download material (one machine readable copy and one print copy per page) for your personal and/or
educational non-commercial use only.

People using these records relating to the archives of Historical Papers, The Library, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, are reminded that such records sometimes contain material which is uncorroborated, inaccurate,
distorted or untrue. While these digital records are true facsimiles of paper documents and the information contained
herein is obtained from sources believed to be accurate and reliable, Historical Papers, University of the Witwatersrand
has not independently verified their content. Consequently, the University is not responsible for any errors or
omissions and excludes any and all liability for any errors in or omissions from the information on the website or any
related information on third party websites accessible from this website.

This document forms part of the archive of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), held at the Historical
Papers Research Archive at The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

leaders claimed, it did have in 1921, at the time of its second congress, nearly
100,000 members on its books, as revealed in an analysis made by W. A. Domingo *)
of the deliberately confused financial statement given by the leadership to the
delegates at the Second Congress. Moreover, the movement exercised a tremendous
ideological influence over millions of Negroes outside its ranks.

REFLECTED MILITANCY OF THE MASSES IN ITS EARLY STAGES

The movement began as a radical petty bourgeois national movement, reflec¬
ting to a great extent in its early stages the militancy of the toiling masses, and
in its demands expressing their readiness for struggle against oppression. From
the very beginning there were two sides inherent to the movement: a democratic
side and a reactionary side. In the early stage the democratic side dominated.
To get the masses into the movement, the national reformist leaders were forced
to resort to demagogy. The pressure of the militant masses in the movement
further forced them to adopt progressive slogans. The program of tihe first: congress
was full pf militant demands expressing the readiness for struggle.

A Negro mass movement with such
perspectives was correctly construed by
the imperialists as a direct threat to
imperialism, and pressure began to be
put on the leadership. A threat of the
imperialists, inspired and backed by the
leadership of the N. A. A. C. P., to ex¬
clude Garvey from t'he country on his
return from a tour of the West Indies
brought about the complete and object
capitulation of the national reformist
leaders. Crawling on his knees before
the imperialists, Garvey enunciated the
infamous doctrine that “the Negro must
be loyal to all flags under which he
lives". This was a complete negation of
the Negro liberation struggle. It was
followed by an agreement with the Ku
Klux Klan, in which the reformists
catered for the support of the southern
senators in an attempt to secure the
“repatriation" of the Negro masses by
deportation to Liberia.

The objective difficulties and subjective weakness of the movement, arising out
of reformist leadership and its attempt to harmonize the demands of all the dissa¬
tisfied elements among the Negro people, inevitably led to the betrayal of the
toiling masses.

SURRENDERED RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION OF NEGRO
MAJORITIES OF U. S. AND WEST INDIES

While never actually waging a real struggle for national liberation the move¬
ment did make some militant demands in the beginning. However, these demands
were soon thrown overboard as the reactionary side of the movement gained
dominance. There followed a complete and shameful abandonment and betrayal of
the struggles of the Negro masses of the United States and the West Indies. The

*) In an article in the Crusader Magazine, entitled "Figures Never Lie But Liars
Do Figure".

GARVEY, Seli appointed “President
and Emperor" of Africa, “Duke” of
the Nile and “Lord” of !he Congo,
etc. etc.

15

right of the Negro majorities in the West Indies and in the Black Belt of the United
States to determine and control their own government was as completely negated
by the Garvey national reformists as by the imperialists. The Garvey movement
became a tool of the imperialists. Even its struggle slogans for the liberation of
the African peoples, which had always been given main stress, were abandoned
and the movement began to peddle the illusion of a peaceful return to Africa.

At first giving expression to the disgust which the Negro masses felt for the
religious illusions of liberation through "divine" intervention, etc., the Garvey
movement became one of the main social carriers of these illusions among the
masses, with Marcus Garvey taking on the role of High Priest after the resignation
and defection of the Chaplain-General, Bishop McGuire. Feudal orders, high soun¬
ding titles and various commercial adventures were substituted for the struggle
demands of the earlier stages.

How completely the reactionary side came to dominate the movement is shown
in (1) its acceptance of the Ku Klux Klan viewpoint that the United States is a
white man s country and the Negro masses living here are rightfully denied all
democratic rights; (2) the rejection by the leaders at the 1929 convention in
Jamaica, B. W. I., of a resolution condemning imperialism.

In both cases the betrayals just noted were carried to their logical conclusion,
in Garvey's bid for an alliance with the Ku Klux Klan, and in an article he wrote
in the Black Man (Jamaica organ of the movement) shortly after the 1929 conven¬
tion in which he attacked the Jamaica workers for organizing into unions of the
1. U. U. L. to better their conditions. In this article he attacked Communism as a
menace to the imperialists and warned the Negro masses of Jamaica that they
' would not dare accept and foster something tabooed by the mother country”. So
complete was the counterrevolutionary degeneration of the national reformists that
the oppressing imperialism was openly accepted by them as their “mother coun¬
try!’ . The imperialist oppressors were presented to the masses as "friends who
have treated him (the Negro) if not fairly, with some kind of consideration!”.

The decline of the movement synchronized with the subsiding of the post war
crisis. As a result both of the lessening of the economic pressure an the masses and
the awakening of the most militant sections of the membership to the betrayals
being carried and demagogy, the masses began to drop away from the movement.
Relieved of the pressure of -the militant masses the movement began to asert more
and more its reactionary and anti-democratic side.

Already at the Second Congress it was evident that the national reformists
v/ere losing their grip on the masses. As a result of the widespread exposures
carried on by the Negro radicals *) against the dishonest business schemes and con¬
sistent betrayals of the national Negro liberation movement by the Garvey refor¬
mists, the sympathetic masses outside of the organization were becoming more
and more critical of the national reformists. Within the organization itself there
was such wide-spread dissatisfaction that the top leadership was forced to make
sacrifical goats of several rubber stamp lieutenants. Within a few months of the
closing of the Second Congress, the first big mass defections occurred (California,
Philadelphia). These revolts, however, were led by reformists and were significant
only from the point of view of the growing disintegration of the movement. From
1921, the movement has undergone a continuous process of deterioration and break¬
up, as the masses increasingly came to realize the treacherous character of the
national reformist leaders.

*) The Negro radicals referred to are Richard B. Moore, Otto Huiswoud, W. A.
Domingo, Cyril Briggs and Hubert Harrison before his degeneration.

16

The recent decision of Garvey to sell the Jamaica properties of the organiza¬
tion (pocketing the proceeds) and take up his residence in Europe (far from the
masses he has plundered and betrayed), denotes a high stage in the collapse of
this reactionary movement, whose dangerous ideology, bears not a single demo¬
cratic trait.

Historically, however, the movement has certain progressive achievements. It
undoubtedly helped to crystalize the national aspirations of the Negro masses.
Moreover, the Negro masses achieved a certain political ripening as a result of
their experience and disillusionment with this movement.

Before concluding, it is necessary to emphasize here that the Garvey move¬
ment, while in decline and on the verge of collapse, still represents a most dan-

Unemployed
Negroes in
America forced
to live in a cave
under the Street

gerous reactionary force, exercising considerable ideological influence over large
masses of Negroes. It will not do to ignore this movement which is most dangerous
in its disintegration because of the desperate attempts being made by the national
reformist leaders to maintain their influence over the Negro masses, either by
saving the movement as it is or by luring the dissatisfied masses into other organiza¬
tions under the control of the national reformists.

The situation affords considerable opportunity for the winning of the Negro
masses away from the influence of the reformists which must be made one of the
foremost tasks of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers,
specially in Africa and the West Indies.

17

Scottsboro Campaign in England

By J. Louis Engdahl.

It took more than three weeks to win the right for the Scottsboro Negro
Mother, Mrs. Ada Wright, to visit Great Britain for ten days, the time limit set
by the British foreign office in London.

In the United States the workers demanded of the state department at
Washington that it keep its "Hands Off!" the Scottsboro Negro Mother's tour.
It was clear that the dollar ambassador to London, the American multi-millionaire,
Andrew Mellon, formerly Secretary of the Treasury in the Hoover cabinet, while
refusing to listen to the protests of the British workers against the burning alive
of the Scottsboro boys, had exerted the utmost pressure upon the MacDonald
government to bar Mrs. Ada Wright from Britain's shores. But the decision given
in the closing days of May, by the British consul at Zurich, Switzerland, that the
Scottsboro Mother be not admitted, was changed in the latter days of June by the
British Foreign Office's own decision rendered through the British consul in Paris
granting the ten-day stay, of which the Scottsboro Negro Mother took immediate
advantage.

It was clear that the MacDonald government had capitulated to this extent
before the growing mass basis in Europe of the Scottsboro campaign, just as the

Comrade Patterson, of the League ior Negro Rights demanding the freedom
of the 9 Scottsboro Boys at a mass meeting in New York

18

Belgian government that had first expelled Mrs. Ada Wright completely turned
about and saw its former Socialist premier, Emile Vandervelde, chairman of the
Second Socialist International, speak from the same platform with Mrs. Wright,
and withdrew its police completely from the scene of the Brussels' Scottsboro
demonstration.

It is significant that these international developments are taking place around
the first anniversary, July 10th, of the date first set (Juli 10, 1931) for the burning
alive of the Scottsboro Negro children in the electric chair in its Kilby Prison,
Montgomery, Alabama.

When the Southern Judge, Hawkins, on April 8, 1931, sentenced the Negro
boys to die in the electric chair on Friday, July 10, 1931, it is clear that he fully
believed the sentence would be carried out. So did the mob of 10,000 around
the courthouse led by so-called "Southern gentlemen''. So did the Southern press,
while the northern press gave little attention. Never before had world protest
been organized against lynching — either mob lynching or judicial lynching — -
carried through by the so-called "white supremacy" against the oppressed Negro
millions "to keep them in their place". Not even the workers in the United States
had been mobilized sufficienly against this class and national oppression.

Not only the landlord and industrial reaction in the South, but the ruling class
generally throughout the United States war startled by the rapidity and successful
development of the world-wide protest against its planned murders. In the South
especially it had never been considered a "crime” for an individual white, or
a mob of whites, to kill Negroes. Leaders or members of lynching parties — mobs —
were never arrested. Instead they were the honoured members of the community,
elected to public office and sent to congress in Washington.

Instead of "July 10, 1931", therefore, we now have "October 10, 1932", the
date when the United States Supreme Court, the highest in the land, will review
the Scottboro case. It is not in the power of this high court to free the Scotts¬
boro boys. That power still rests with Governor Miller, of Alabama. The
Washington high court has the power to overrule the devisions of the lower courts
and declare that the Negro boys must have a new trial. Such a decision, however,
wrung from the Washington high court, the strongest pillar of capitalist class
justice in the United States, will have its tremendous historic significance and will
go far forward determining the further developments in this attempted legal
massacre in Alabama.

The steadily growing mass protest, in France, in Belgium, in Holland and now
in Great Britain, since the United States Supreme Court action in deciding to
review the case, shows that the toiling masses have no illusions as to the "fairness"
or "impartiality" of capitalist class justice, but realize that mass pressure alone
can bring concessions from or victory over the U. S. Supreme Court in Washing¬
ton, and that section of the American ruling class that lords over the oppressed
Negro masses in Alabama.

This is the significance of the "crashing of the gates" of British-MacDonald
imperialism by the Scottsboro Negro Mother, the mass welcome that she received
from the workers, Negroes, Hindus and of other races with the white workers,
the workers of all races attending the meetings and demonstrations, being listed
among the speakers.

The Scottsboro Negro Mother visited the House of Parliament and demanded
action from the Labour Party members, s ome of whom listened to her. George
Lansbury, one of the "left" weathercocks of the Labour Party, asked for a state¬
ment of the Scottsboro case, so that he can place it before the Labour Party
Parliamentary Executive. The bourgeois League of Coloured Peoples requested

19

Mrs. Wright as a speaker before it, This, however, will not be allowed to eva¬
porate into respectful protests” or "carefully worded demands" upon the lynch-
law ambassador of the Wall Street plutocracy— Mellon. But militant action will
press for ever-wider mass movements of struggle against the intended Scottsboro
massacre of the Negro boys — whole centuries of barbarous oppression crystallized
into one bloody infamy in the days when the world's richest imperialism is in the
grip of its worst economic crisis.

A LETTER FROM LONDON

Dear Comrade Editor: —

Please publish the following account of a joint meeting of white and coloured
workers in London, so that your readers will know what we are doing to save the
Scottsboro boys. You already know of the great meetings we held when Mrs,
Wright was here.

On July 14th, 1932, at Trinity Hall Poplar East End of London a Meeting of
the International Labour Defence and the Negro Welfare Association was held
on behalf of the Scottsboro boys. The meeting assumed the proportions of an
International Assembly owing to the fact that it was composed of Germans,
Negroes from the U.S. A., Trinidad, Indians, Chinese and workers from several
other colonies. The compositon of the platform was: Several women, white and
coloured, colonials, also one German and several Englishmen.

The speeches commenced with an opening address by the Rev. Wim Dick, the
incumbent of Trinity Hall who lent the hall for the purpose of the said meeting.
He said that he agreed with the Resolution of Protest against the murder of these
innocent lads and thereupon called upon the first speaker, a native of Trinidad
Chris Jones, to give his views on the subject. This comrade explained very well
how this particular case only went to show how the capitalist class was spreading
race hatred between white and black workers in order to disrupt the comradely
solidarity between the working masses. He closed by stating that he hoped to see
the united front of all workers, irrespective of race, colour or creed against the
capitalist class, — in their common class struggle.

1 he next speaker was a member of the I. L. D., quite a young comrade, but
he put the position very plain, showing the need for immediate action on the part
of the masses against the persecution of the Negro boys. He also stated that the
will of the international working class will eventually win out in this case.

After him, a communist, comrade Spillman spoke as a seconder of the
resolution. The next speaker, a German comrade, in supporting the resolution
stated that he had never had the opportunity of speaking on the same platform
together with Negro comrades and that the workers of all countries and all races
must close ranks to fight against the growing wave of terror of the capitalist
class in the whole world.

The resolution was then put before the meeting which was passed unanimously
with much acclamation. The meeting closed with a few sketches by the "Red
Radio Troupe who put the position of the workers quite clearly. All credit is
due for the fine success of this meeting, to comrade Jim Headley, the organizer
of the meeting, and to comrade A. Ward, the chairman of the Negro Welfare
Association. It is indeed pleasing to think that colour is no bar for working class
meetings and that the British workers realize that what affects our coloured
comrades will also affect them unless we combine our forces to fight the common
enemy: Capitalism.

Fraternally Yours A. Crowther.

20

Voices From The Colonies

Misery In The West Indies

Grenada, 16. 6. 32.

To the Editor of the "Negro Worker"

Our illustrious journal of May 15th, 1932 reached my hands but yesterday; and
1 must confess the truth, that after reading it I could have no rest till I send you
these lines.

Believe me that we long needed such an Association that will shake off the
shackles of imperialist oppression. If the Garvey movement had this kind of true
spirit, much good could have been done, but, as you said, we can't beg our way
through, we must fight our way until we get to our goal.

* *

*

There is no line of the trades or the professions that we are not now competent
in, many of us are skilled farmers, agriculturalists, scientists in many of the arts
and crafts of present day calling, but the time has come when our usefulness is
no more required by our overlords, because inventive machineries have come to
stay and outclass us on a whole. That is, where 5,000 or more Negroes were
employed fifteen years ago, only about one hundred are required to do the same
amount of work now, by simply turning a screw or a button. Consequently
millions of us Negroes in the West Indies, Panama, Cuba, Santo Domingo and the
United States of America are thrown out of work to live on the bones of a half-
starved body.

The countries which had offered us work and employment before are now
face to face with economic depression, and have refused us to even land on their
borders without a big financial deposit. Right now there are over 40,000 Negroes,
held upland out of work in a cold world by the Government of Panama, who can
no longer find space for them to live and work as heretofore. The Jamaica Govern¬
ment was asked1 some time ago to take over this lot of Negroes, but refused on the
grounds, that these Negroes are not all Jamaicans. Only a few days ago ship loads
of Negroes were despatched from the Republic of Cuba to Jamaica, destitute and
half starved, and there are over twenty thousand more to be sent away, probably
to no man's land.

In Santo Domingo there are over twenty sugar cane estates that used to employ
from eight to ten thousands Negroes each, today those same estates can only
employ one hundred or a little over, and now there are many thousand Negroes,
capable of doing any kind of work, sitting and living on dire want and1 starvation
in that republic.

In the West Indies, including British, French and Dutch, there are over
214 million Negroes, who on account of taxation, dare not kill without a licence
from the Government a duck, turkey, or any other fourfooted animals, for they
would be dragged to court, and fined or confined; within eight miles of some of
the towns of some of these West Indies, no Negroe peddler dare sell ripe fruits,
such as pears, mangoes, bananas, canes or any other vegetables or things without
obtaining first a market licence; if caught without, they are fined or confined
according to the offence. In some of the other towns, no labourer dare apply for
any kind of work to carry a suit-case for a traveller or any other baggage without
a cash licence from the police department etc. Selling without a licence cow's
milk, charcoal, wood, ginger beer, candies etc. etc. is a grave offense, punished

21

with a big fine or long term emprisonment. In many of these West Indian Islands
afore mentioned, these and other measures of oppression and wrongs cry aloud
i°r a change. VC e know that by birth we should have a right to live on this earth
There is no pen nor paper that can tell the hardships and oppression of us
eg'roes in the West Indies. But believing in the nature of your organization, —
in fact I may now say, our organisation, — I must look for that long cherished hope
that some time, very soon, we shall through this organization throw off our
shackles of British imperialism, and shall feel like those good Russians, who are
living on God’s green fields— with nothing to make them afraid.

Please Let me hear how best I can serve you, how I can get myself lined up
with the grand movement. I am ready to shed the last drop of blood for the
freedom of our race, and for those peoples who are willing to teach us their ex¬
periences to help fight the battle to a victorious end.

West Indian Peasant Women

Send and let me know how we can obtain freedom of speech and the right
to organize. Not one of us out here dare form any kind of association and talk
of freedom for the peoples of our race. I was expelled from Barbados as early
as January of this year, had to turn away from Trinidad to British Guiana, to be
imprisoned for three months because I organized an Association for the embetter-
ment of the Negroes’ conditions and now in this little hole of Grenada I am
watched like a hen that is laying. I can't find any good place to be left alone by
British imperialism.

Believe me full of propaganda and full of fight.

Yours, — suffering under the British yoke,

S. P. R.

A GARVEYITE OFFENDED

Georgetown, Demerara, 4. 6. 32.

Dear Comrade Editor: —

After reading one of your leaflets entitled, “What is the International Trade
Union Committee bf Negro Workers?” I saw on the outside corver the words “Long
live the freedom of Africa! But in the inside I read these lines: "For years we
have given our money to so-called big Negro leaders like the reformist Marcus
Garvey."

22

Now I, as an African born in British Guiana cannot understand how you can
talk that way of the Hon. gentleman Marcus Garvey. For I say with no apology
that when he came forward and told us of a free Africa, and nationalism for the
Africans at home and abroad,— that caused the other races to respect us as a
people. Through the vision of Marcus Garvey also sprung up the U. N. I. A., — yet
still you, a man from the land of burnt men are talking bad about the man that
is causing many a revolts the world over today. We want, and must have natio¬
nalism, before we as a race and people can get an international hearing in the
line of politics, commerce, finance, employment, education, forced labour, etc
Without nationalism we are like a ship without a rudder.

Therefore, why you as a leader of the race too should count a man like Garvey
among the crooks of the world? I say we of British Guiana do not like it and if
you attack Garvey your work will not get as much hearing as it ought to get.

I say stop criticizing Garvey and strike your blows on one side and leave Garvey on
the other. For we are having a large tree to fell, and if you stop giving encourage¬
ment it would not fall at the time when we Africans are looking forward for
it to fall.

I would like to be an agent for your “Negro Worker" and other good1 books
which are showing the wrongs done to our people in Africa and all the world
over. I like the Committee's work but for God Allmighty's sake leave the African's
leader, the Hon. Marcus Garvey alone, the first man who put Africa before us.

I am a member of the African race. Henry H. Kendal.

Dear Comrade Kendal: —

Thanks very much for your letter. Unfortunately space prevents us from
publishing it in detail. However we are printing those parts which express your
resentment of our criticism of Marcus Garvey. We are very sorry to offend you
but like you we make no apologies for our uncompromising exposure of the refor¬
mist politician of Garvey, especially his capitalist utopian scheme of "Back to
Africa”.

We shall deal with this matter in greater detail in future issues of our maga¬
zine. In the meanwhile we would like to draw your attention to the article of
comrade Briggs, published elsewhere in this issue.

We are against the reformist ideas of Garvey, — for, instead of giving some
practical help to the Negro masses in their day-to-day economic struggles,
especially at this time of mass unemployment and starvation — be has completely
deserted the masses. Garvey has not done one single thing to help the workers
in the fight for social insurance and other forms of immediate relief. Therefore it
becomes more and more the duty of all class conscious revolutionary Negro
workers to expose the demagogy behind which he has masqueraded for all of these
years as the "great” leader.

We hope that you will write us again and continue to frankly discuss your
problems with us. In the meanwhile, we would like you to give your assistance
and support to the British Guiana Labour Union which is carrying on a splendid
struggle in organizing the workers, especially the unemployed, for state relief,
non-payment of rent and the other immediate demands of the working class. This
is a practical way of helping in the struggles of the working class against British
imperialism.

Don't wait until you go to Africa to begin the fight against your exploiters,
for you might never get over there. You must start the fight right now. And you
can only do this by joining up with the other workers in the union. You must not
forget that the same British capitalists who are exploiting the masses in Africa

23

Homes of Negro workers in Jamaica.

The 'home of a Negro capitalist in
Kingston, Jamaica.

Where Terror Reigns / By j. komfeder.

During recent months the capitalist press in England and America has been
carrying on a campaign of slander against Liberia. The purpose of this campaign
is to "justify” the policy of annexation of this country which has been openly
advocated even in t!he British Parliament. In order to further prepare the way tor
taking over Liberia and placing it under a mandate of one of the imperialist
powers, — Great Britain or America — the League of Nations has set up a com¬
mission to put through this dirty deal.

Venezuela is one of the countries represented on the commission to pass
judgement on Liberia, and because of this, we are publishing the following account
of the terror in that South American hell hole so that the workers, peasants and
all anti-imperialist fighters of Liberia will recognise the character of their new
foreign slave masters, who are equally as notorious as the black capitalist
oppressors in Liberia and the white imperialist exploiters in other parts of Africa.

The writer of the article was himself imprisonned for three months in La
Rotunda dungeon in Venezuela. Ed.

are also exploiting you in British Guiana. And this is exactly what Marcus Garvey
is not interested in, despite of all his big talk about, "Africa for the Africans, at
home and abroad". He lives in ease and comfort, out of the millions of dollars
which you and other mislead workers have given to him. Garvey is so much at
peace with the British imperialists that he does not even worry himself about
trying to form a union in order to help the thousands of black men and women
employed on the docks and banana plantations to get higher wages and shorter
hours, much less to worry about the millions of Negroes in Africa, — thousands
of miles away from Kingston. You must not permit yourself to be misled by
Garvey’s "radical" talk. That is exactly what he depends upon to fool the Negro
masses. You must judge men not only by what they say but by their deeds and if
we judge Marcus by this standard, every honest Negro can see that he is a fraud.

Ed.

A CONTRAST OF CLASSES:

24

Facing the Land of Horrors.

Sailing from Curacao, a Dutch Island, a day's ride from the Venezuelan Coast,
one begins to hear lurid stories about "the regime". One of the passengers on
board from Curacao told me about a famous case where a Frenchman with his
beautiful wife landed) in Marracairo, one of the generals of Juan Vincento Gomez
(owner of twoJthirds of the country and political lord and master of it all) took
a liking to the Frenchman's wife, arrested the Frenchman and nothing more has
been ever heard of him. His wife still is in the general's harem.

Three years ago a party of Venezuelans took over the Dutch governor’s
palace in Curacao, possessed themselves of all arms and forced the captain of an
American steamer to carry them over to Venezuela, in a venture to overthrow
the Gomez regime. It is with stories like these, based on facts, but woven into
fiction that one gets introduced to Venezuela as one approaches is coasts.

Finally we are in front of Puerto Cabello. We see men in convict clothes
on shore, guarded by soldiers who hang all around in vagabond fashion. Some
of the "convicts” clamber about the walls of an ancient Spanish shore fortress.
While up on a hill, there is an old Spanish castle, overlooking the sea. God, what
a heat — what's up there, I ask a passenger. Why man, don't you know what that
is? This is the infamous "El Castillo" where Gomez sends his political and
personal enemies, there are about 1,200 of them up there right now. Anyone
sent to this place may as well consider himself halfway in the next world."

I took a dislike to my informer, he gave me the shivers with all these stories.
Anyway, I went on shore, behind me some guys followed) in an "innocent" way —
I kept within sight of the boat, however, and got back safely.

In the next port called "La Guira” I was to get off definitely. I wrote some
letters to my friends, that if they don't hear of me weekly to search for me
through the U. S. Consul. I had no wife — but who knows, a fellow like me, who
never lived in a place like this may say something and who knows what may
happen next — a little bit of precaution might help.

Well, we landed in “La Guira". They took my passport and said I should
look for it at the police headquarters. Coming there, an old sly fox looked me
over. I was asked for $20 for deposit for entry and $2 for consular fee of entry,
although I paid $5 for the Venezuelan visa in Panama. Wlell, a little bit of graft,
that's nothing after all the gruesome stories I heard. Then $2 more to grease the
baggage examiner for speedy service, and I was through with formalities. Then —
a fellow steps up to me and says I owe him a dollar. Like hell, I says, so he
takes me to a shriveled up old cop to take me to the police station. Fine busi¬
ness, I thought — I gave him the dollar.

Caracas, the Capital of Captain Blood.

With a taxicab, traveling over one of the most magnificent roads I ever saw,
1 speeded to the capital. Fine road, I says to the chauffeur. All made by pri¬
soners, he says. Well, there 1 am in a pension in Caracas. Nice construction
for a Latin American town. Passing by the police headquarters, I see a squad of
men seated there with rifles and fixed bayonets, others with unsheathed swords —
nothing to do but be in readiness.

I see newspapers for sale, I buy them, 1, 2, 2, 4 different ones, but not a
word in them about other countries, some write-ups about biology and ancient

25

history but nothing about doings inside the country. There is nothing more omin¬
ously impressive to a foreigner than just these simple facts, which is the outward
sign of the complete muzzling of the press.

After bumming around in all the movies in town, punk, censured stuff — and
attending to some business. I see in one of the papers, something about a session
of Venezuelan Senate and Congress, so, after all, there seems to be a Parliament.
I read the sessions were opened — proposed law so and so read unanimously
approved, so and so made a speech, that's all that appears — I am no wiser
than before.

Thus, I pass two weeks, day by day, business is rotten, ominous silence of
everyone I try to talk to, but no one talks about politics or bad business. Around
my hotel suspicious individuals hang around, it seems to be an "innocent'' habit.

I contract for my ticket to go back to New York, there is nothing to do and
no one will talk to me. Everybody seems to distrust everyone else, unless it is
his bosom friend and I can't make them open up. Then one day, just by luck
I met a New Yorker, a friend of mine, a Venezuelan (now in jail) by the name
of Mariano Fortoul. He introduced me to his friends, intellectuals, some of them
Communists. Wje have some friendly parties. Then one night about 11:30 p. m.,
the police led by the prefect himself swoops down on us and next thing we are
in "La Rotunda", one of the most notorious prisons in the world.

“La Rotunda .

A whole company of loyal mercenaries. The "Ondinos" guards the prison,
fixed bayonets all the time. We are told to strip naked. Every seam and nook
and oorner of pockets in our clothing is examined for a hidden bit of a pencil,
also our ears and rectum, to prevent us from communicating. Watches, pens,
pencils and belts, or anything metalic is taken away to prevent us from having
or making even the tiniest weapon, we are not to know the time of the day.
Through a manhole in the door, guarded by two soldiers, we are let into the
interior of the prison. There in a large cell without chairs or bed in it, just plain
naked floor, no blankets or anything, I am locked up. No one except the guard
inside (they make assassins as guards over the politicals) is allowed to talk to me.

The pot: bellied "general" director of the prison with a skull size of a small
cocoanut, looks me over in the morning, whip in hand. Later on I found out that
the "general" is a former bandit chieftain who made peace with Gomez. From
the pile of junk in the court yard my guard picks a rusty can, this to serve me
food and water with. There is no toilet in the cell, so they put a big open oil
can, rusty on the edges. Thousands of insects crawl about in the cell. Order is
given not to give me water and only half prison ration (even the full ration is
slow Starvation). I feel I am getting introduced to Venezuela.

Cling, clang, ting, tang, 6 o'clock in the morning. Sound of hundreds of dull
cow-bells. But it's not cows, it's human beings with yard long steel bars, thick¬
ness of a man's arm, fastened to their legs. The so-called grillos weigh from
50 to 200 pounds on their feet, and as they move the hooks that fasten the bar to
both legs they make this metallic sound.

Soon I see one crossing the yard, in order to walk they shift their immobilized
body like a barrel with a hip movement, lifting the irons up with a string. The
Irons remain on them day and night. Most of them wear only panties. Almost
all have unshaven faces, beards of many months. The one that s moving across
the yard is being put into a dark cell an half rations. After two months he looked
like a ghost, the skin clinging tightly to his bones.

A group of prisoners, among them another American by the name of Alfredo
Mazuerra (Venezuelan by birth) committed the “horrible" crime of trying to

26

communicate with the outside. Irons three times the weight are snapped on them.
They protest. Their hands are tied behind their backs and with the irons on they
are thus totally immobile. The whip is used, some of them are strung up on the
wall with their feet tied. One of the guards says passing by my cell "this way
they will die" the other says "it don't matter”.

One of the prisoners, a rich farmer who did not want to give his land to
Gomez at a voluntary' price was kept as a "gentleman prisoner" without chains.
Too old to stand it he got insane, so they snapped! the irons on him, bound his
hands backward, and gave him the whip — Gomez's medicine for all, be’ they sane
or insane.

Why the Terror?

The effects have their causes, and tihe causes are that about one of the three
million of the total Venezuelan population live in a state of semi -slavery. They
are not bought or sold but are bound to their master, can't leave the plantation
without permission and can be physically mistreated or even killed by t'heir
master without consequences. They receive no wages, just work for grub. About
800,000 of the agrarian population who live nearer the cities get paid in wages,
but are obliged To buy from the commisary stores of the owners at double prices
and most of them never get out of the debts and are liable to arrest if they
leave without paying it.

Gomez started off as a middle sized landlord. He represented the land
owning class. He recruited his followers from the guerilla bands roaming about

Comrade C. JONES, of the London Negro Welfare
Association, addressing British workers in Trafalgar
Square, London on the Scottsboro Case

the country in his days, and the vagabonds of the countryside and playing one
group of owners against the other, gradually expropriated most of them so that
today he has two-thirds of all cultivated lands in his own hands.

The young bourgeoisie in the cities opposed him and tried to make the
French revolution against Gomez s feudal rule, but lost. Gomez is now "partner”
in almost all the important industrial undertakings of the bourgeoisie. Gomez
gave himself various commercial monopolies like meat, butter, milk, river and
coastwise traffic, etc. He gets two cents per barrel of all oil extracted in Vene¬
zuela from the foreign capitalists that run the oil fields, and Venezuela is the
third! largest! oil producer in the world. Thus utilizing his political power to grab

27

off everything, he became from a large size peasant one of the richest men in the
world, In the process of doing it he had to suppress and eliminate everybody
in his way. About 30,000 political prisoners, thousands of them youths of the
"best" families, passed through the prison. Hundreds of them were tortured to
death for attempting tio make the bourgeois revolution. Only lately have we seen
the working masses themselves organizing, and Communists among the prisoners.

A reign of this kind can't tolerate any opposition, the so-called Congress
and! Senate, the governors, and all from top to bottom are appointed by Gomez.
His army is recruited in approved feudal fashion. They are caught like dogs
in' the villages and in the army there is the regime of the whip. The soldiers
are used as laborers on Gomez's farms and the poor devils picked up under
any pretense and made prisoners together with the politicals construct the roads
and] public buildings.

There is no judicial procedure, to be arrested means to be on the road gangs,
or in the "grillos", if not worse in the case of politicals. There are no charges,
no trials, no sentences. A prisoner never knows for how long he stays in, nor
what is next.

No organization is permitted, be it parties, labor unions, societies; even
chambers of commerce are not in favor. And the Catholic Church has to accept
as bishops those that Gomez wants. Anyone, be it a factory owner, priest or
working man that protests is picked up in the dark of the moon and it is con¬
sidered a favor if his relatives are informed or permitted to send in food or
clothing to him. Any number that dares to assemble in public without Gomez's
permission is shot at without warning.

And this, my dear friends, is a government looked upon as friendly by
the United States, and other so-called civilized Governments and is recognized.

Wjhat matters is that a bandit appropriates everything to himself and blud¬
geons the people, this in the eyes of the capitalists does not violate property
principles, as long as one robber has it all and shares it with the other capitalist
thieves, but if, as in the Soviet Union, the people own it, collectively, why that's
impermissible and such a government can't be recognized.

Down with Imperialist Terror!
Freedom for all Class War Prisoners!

28

The Labour Movement

The World Situation and the Negro

By Cyril Briggs (New York).

This is the second of a series of articles analyzing the effects of the present
world crisis on the Negro masses in America, Africa and the West Indies, by
Cyril Briggs, the well known Negro revolutionary journalist, and contributing
editor to the "NEGRO WORKER".

These articles do not only review the present situation in which the Negro
masses find themselves in but, most important of all, they show the Negro toilers
of America and the colonies the only way in which they can win national freedom
and social emancipation. Study these articles, discuss them with your friends,
and write us your opinions. — Ed.:

The Crisis of Capitalism

The present world economic and financial crisis of capitalism bears only a
superficial resemblance to former crises of capitalism. The capitalist world is
today shaken as never before. It is filled with the gloomiest outlook. Leading
capitalists openly express alarm as to the future of the system which thrives on
the robbery and oppression of the working-class and colonial masses. The leading
British economist, Sir George Paish, some weeks ago predicted an early general
smash-up of the capitalist system.

The present crisis occurs against the background of the general crisis of
capitalism, the breakdown of the capitalist system, the rise of Communism, the
existence of the Soviet Union and the revolutionary upsurge of the working class
and the colonial masses througout the capitalist world.

During the past few months, the economic and financial crisis has increased
with great rapidity in virulence and extent. Industrial output in the capitalist
countries has sunk to the lowest level so far recorded during the crisis. Capitalist
industry has reached the saturation point. An example is the automobile
industry, to which the capitalists vainly look to lead them out of the crisis. The
automobile plants are closed down, or working only on part time with greatly
reduced forces. The building industry is also saturated. Hoover's talk of destroying
the slums in which millions of workers, and particularly the Negro workers, are
forced to live, is just so much bunk. Only in the Soviet Union, where the workers
and peasants rule, is the slum heritage of the Czars being destroyed and decent
homes erected for the toiling masses.

Capitalist America.

In the United States, the strongest sector of capitalism, there have been
several stock exchange collapses. Two thousand, three hundred forty-two banks
had failed in the United States alone up to October 30, 1931, according to the
admission of J. W. Pole, Controller of the Currency. Millions of workers have
been robbed of their meager savings in these bank crashes. Security quotations
have dropped sharply.

Catastrophic drops continue in the prices of agricultural products. Farmers
have had to sell their wheat as low as 25 cents a bushel. Cotton prices have
dropped as low as 6 cents a pound, further lowering the starvation standards of
the Negro masses in the South. This ist the lowest price for cotton in many
decades.

29

Starving white and black ex-soldiers on the steps of the American
parliament buildings demand their war bonus and relief

The capitalists have no way out of the crisis except at the increased ruination
of the farmers and starvation and misery for the workers, and the 12,000,000 un¬
employed and their families in the United States. Fantastic proposals such as
ploughing under every third row of cotton have been made by the United States
Farm Board. Banks and insurance companies have foreclosed on farm mortgages,
throwing many farm families out of their homes. Land prices have dropped
50 percent. No purchasers are to be found for the foreclosed farm properties.

30

Collection Number: AD1715

SOUTH AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF RACE RELATIONS (SAIRR), 1892-1974
PUBLISHER:

Collection Funder:- Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation
Publisher:- Historical Papers Research Archive
Location:- Johannesburg
©2013

LEGAL NOTICES:

Copyright Notice: All materials on the Historical Papers website are protected by South African copyright law and
may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, or otherwise published in any format, without the prior
written permission of the copyright owner.

Disclaimer and Terms of Use: Provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained therein, you
may download material (one machine readable copy and one print copy per page) for your personal and/or
educational non-commercial use only.

People using these records relating to the archives of Historical Papers, The Library, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, are reminded that such records sometimes contain material which is uncorroborated, inaccurate,
distorted or untrue. While these digital records are true facsimiles of paper documents and the information contained
herein is obtained from sources believed to be accurate and reliable, Historical Papers, University of the Witwatersrand
has not independently verified their content. Consequently, the University is not responsible for any errors or
omissions and excludes any and all liability for any errors in or omissions from the information on the website or any
related information on third party websites accessible from this website.

This document forms part of the archive of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), held at the Historical
Papers Research Archive at The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

In ihe meantime, capitalism presents the shocking contrast of a huge surplus
of goods, of full warehouses and bursting granaries, and on the other hand
thousands of destitute unemployed workers dying of starvation or committing
suicide, millions existing at a starvation level, and wage-cuts, speed-up and
lenghtening hours of labor further undermining the purchasing power of the
toiling masses.

The capitalists are desperately trying to find a way out of the crisis at the
expense of the masses. A conscious policy of inflation of the currency is pro¬
ceeding in every capitalist country, including the United States. But inflation
serves only to sharpen the crisis by further shaping the credit structure without
supplying a sound basis for setting the wheels of industry in motion. Inflation,
however, means another attack against the real wages of the working class,
raising the price level and thus increasing the cost of living at the same time
that wages are being slashed right and left and increasing numbers thrown on
the streets to starve.

The world economic crisis of capitalism is now in its third year. The
capitalists are no longer able to conceal from the toiling masses the fact of the
decay of the capitalist system. In a single issue, Dec. 21st, the “New York Times’’
was forced to present the following gloomy, but incomplete, picture of the
catastrophic operation of the crisis:

"Holiday Lull Adds to Steel's Decline." "4% Drop Due This Week. Magazine
Finds Holiday Decline in Steel Output Rapid." "Steel Production at 30 percent,"
"34 Year Low in Hogs as Live Stock Dips." "Decline in Building Shown Last
Month." "London Market Depressed." "Feeling at Paris More Unfavourable."
"French Export Trade Continues to Decline." “A Week of Decline in Stocks
in Berlin." "Germany's Retail Trade Off 12-1/8 Percent." “London Stock Market
Prices Lower." "Last Week's Scare Over Dutch Position."

No Crisis in the Soviet Union.

Here we see the capitalists themselves forced to admit the general world
decay of capitalism, of increasing unemployment and mass misery throughout the
capitalist world.

And what are the conditions in the Soviet Union, where the workers and
peasants have freed themselves from the plight of capitalist exploitation? Again,
let the capitalist press tell the story. The following is taken from the New York
Times of December 25, 1931. The figures on unemployment are intentionally
deceiving, but even this deliberate underestimation of the unemployed army and
their dependants cannot destroy the sharp contrast between dying capitalism and
the new society rising in the Soviet Union:

'WORLD'S NEEDY ARE ESTIMATED AT 100,000,000; UNITED STATES
HAS MOST IDLE. RUSSIA NONE.”

"GENEVA, Dec. 24 — The world's needy are estimated this Christmas to
total 100,000,000 men, women and children. The United States stands first in
the list with the number of workers now out of employment at 12,000,000. Soviet
Russia stands last with none."

As pointed out in previous article, ihe economic crisis has been further aggra¬
vated by a financial or credit crisis. This development of the crisis has already
occurred in every capitalist country in the world, including the United States.

(To be continued.)

31

Romain Holland Denounces Imperialism

The following appeal for defence of the Soviet Union, for unity of the working
masses has been issued by Romain Rolland, the great French writer and humani¬
tarian, in connection with the anti-war congress called by an International Com¬
mittee of intellectuals, to take place in Europe on the 28th August:

In the name of besieged China — in the name of the menaced Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics — in the name of the peoples of the earth — in the name of the'
great hopes of humanity which the awakening of the oppressed races of Asia and
the heroic reconstruction of proletarian Russia arouse and sustain in us: I cry
HELP! Down with the assassins! And I denounce to all the world, the ignoble
lies of the governments of Europe and America, especially that of France, whose
handful of adventurers in the service of the war mongers stretch out their rapacious
hand over the earth and use Japanese imperialism as the executioner's axe to
sever the head of the revolution. I denounce the treason of that intellectual class
which formerly was the lookout at the mast of the ship to guide it through storms
— which today basely purchases its peace and comfort by its silence or its servile
flattery which serves the interests of the moneyed and privileged classes. And
I denounce the farce of Geneva and the folly of the League of Nations.

I appeal to tihe sleeping conscience of the best forces of Europe, America
and Africa. I appeal to the consciousness of colossal power as yet unrealized in
all the peoples of the world, to cut the serpent's knot of the plutocratic and military
Fascisms which tomorrow will encircle the globe, to crush the new-born conspiracy
and to seal the union of the working masses of all free peoples.

Romain Rolland.

32

What is the International Trade Union
Committee of Negro Workers?

The Negro Workers Committee was formed in July 1930 at an
international conference of Negro toilers held in Hamburg, Germany.
The Committee is not a race, but a class organization, organizing and
leading the fight in the interests of Negro workers in Africa, the
West Indies and other colonies.

The aims of the Committee are as follows:

1. Abolition of Forced Labour, Peonage and Slavery.

2. Equal Pay for Equal Work — Irrespective of Race, Colour or Sex.

3. Eight Hour Day.

4. Government Relief for Unemployed, — free rent, no taxes.

5. Freedom to organize trade unions, unemployed councils and
peasant committees, — right to strike.

6. Against racial barriers in trade unions and colour bar in industry.

7. Against capitalist terror — lynching, police and soldier terrorism,
arrest and deportation of foreign workers.

8. Against confiscation of peasant and communal lands, against
taxation of the Negro workers and peasants.

9. To promote and develop the spirit of international solidarity
between the workers of all colours and nationalities.

10. To agitate and organize the Negro workers against the imperialist
war in China and the intervention in Soviet Russia, in which
ihe white capitalist exploiters intend to use black workers as
cannon-fodder as they did in the last war.

11. To defend the independence of Liberia, Haiti and other Negro
States and to fight for the full independence of the Negro
toilers in Africa and the West Indies, and their right of self-
determination in the Black Belt of U. S.A.

12. The Committeee also fights against white chauvinism, (race preju¬
dice) social-reformism and the reformist programmes of the Negro
capitalist misleaders, and the missionaries, preachers and other
agents of imperialism.

These misleaders, instead of organizing the Negro masses to fight
for their freedom are the very ones who help the capitalists by
preaching obedience, and loyalty to imperialist rule:

Negro Workers, Organize The Fight Against Imperialism!

Support The Revolutionary Trade Union Movement!

Fight For The Freedom Of The Working Class!

The First Complete Exposure of

THE LIFE & STRUGGLE OF

Negro Toilers

Under Imperialism

By

GEORGE PADMORE

A 128 page book which every white and
Negro worker should read

Price : Paper cover . 1/ — (25 cents)

Cloth cover .... 2/ — (50 cents)
— Postage paid —

= Order Now From: =

AFRICAN FEDERATION OF TRADE UNION
P. 0. BOX 5160 JOHANNESBURG, S. A.

TRADE UNION UNITY LEAGUE
2 WEST 15th ST., NEW YORK CITY

LEAGUE OF STRUGGLE FOR NEGRO RIGHTS
ROOM 201, 50 EAST 13th ST., NEW YORK CITY

WORKERS' LIBRARY PUBLISHERS
P.O. BOX 148, STATION D, NEW YORK CITY

The Publishers, the R. I. L. U. Magazine,

59 Cromer Street, London, W. C. 1

WORKERS’ BOOK SHOP
16 KING STREET, LONDON W. C. 1

INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION COMMITTEE OF NEGRO
WORKERS, 8 Rothesoodstrasse, HAMBURG, GERMANY

Collection Number: AD1715

SOUTH AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF RACE RELATIONS (SAIRR), 1892-1974
PUBLISHER:

Collection Funder:- Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation
Publisher:- Historical Papers Research Archive
Location:- Johannesburg
©2013

LEGAL NOTICES:

Copyright Notice: All materials on the Historical Papers website are protected by South African copyright law and
may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, or otherwise published in any format, without the prior
written permission of the copyright owner.

Disclaimer and Terms of Use: Provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained therein, you
may download material (one machine readable copy and one print copy per page) for your personal and/or
educational non-commercial use only.

People using these records relating to the archives of Historical Papers, The Library, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, are reminded that such records sometimes contain material which is uncorroborated, inaccurate,
distorted or untrue. While these digital records are true facsimiles of paper documents and the information contained
herein is obtained from sources believed to be accurate and reliable, Historical Papers, University of the Witwatersrand
has not independently verified their content. Consequently, the University is not responsible for any errors or
omissions and excludes any and all liability for any errors in or omissions from the information on the website or any
related information on third party websites accessible from this website.

This document forms part of the archive of the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), held at the Historical
Papers Research Archive at The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.